DoD Seeks to Speed Cybersecurity Efforts (Pulse)

DOD Wants to Revamp Cyberspace Acquisition: The Defense Department is intent on moving faster in the sea of acquisitions to secure the world of cyberspace. Defense officials have laid out how they plan to change DOD to match the dynamism of the private sector and the power of emerging technologies. “DOD’s cyberspace acquisition programs will reflect the adaptive nature of cyberspace,” officials wrote in the Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace report released on July 14. Washington Technology

$363 Million for Special Ops IT: Three contractors have won five-year DoD contracts worth a total of $362 million for IT assistance. Booz Allen Hamilton, Dell Services Federal Government and DRS Technical Services Inc., were each awarded indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity Special Operations Forces IT Enterprise Contracts, known as SITECs, in support of the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). The contractors will assist the government in performing the daily operations maintain USSOCOM’s global enterprise environment. Washington Technology

D.C. Is Fourth in Green Tech Jobs: The Brookings Institution says the Washington metro area ranks fourth in the nation in terms the overall size of its clean economy. Its 70,828 clean economy jobs make up 2.3 percent of all jobs in the region. By this measure of concentration, the clean economy here ranks 27th. Between 2003 and 2010 Washington added 20,403 clean jobs to see the sector grow by 5.0 percent annually. Those readings placed the region third and 38th. The Brookings Institution

New Rounds of Venture Capital: Reston-based Razorsight, which develops Web-based financial business intelligence and analytics software for communications service companies, has raised $7.3 million of an equity round targeted at $10 million. The company’s tools audit and analyze more than $50 billion in spending and revenue data from its partners. Meanwhile, Middleburg-based Pong Research, which makes cases for cell phones intended to protect users from their radiation, has raised $5 million in equity funding. And Nimble Storage, developer of converged storage and backup solutions, has received $25 million in an over-subscribed Series D round of funding led by Artis Capital Management. Tech Journal South

New Ideas to Save Old Web Content: Michael Nelson, a computer science professor at Old Dominion University, has spent the past couple of years studying how much of the Internet is being saved and is laboring to build a past for a technology obsessed with the present. The Washington Post

Legislation May Help Hackers: Legislation cracking down on rogue websites could inadvertently help hackers who have recently struck major corporate and government targets, a group of computer science experts said Thursday. Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-VT., introduced the PROTECT IP Act to crack down on sites that sell copyrighted and counterfeited materials. But Internet architecture experts object to a section that requires ISPs to use domain name system filtering to direct traffic away from suspected sites, because the system would also prevent providers from using an emerging security system known as DNSSEC, which sends credentialed messages between browsers and ISPs to ensure that users are taken to the proper website, not a scam website, when they enter a URL. NextGov

Who Will Lead Cyberspace? The question of whether comprehensive cybersecurity legislation is needed to define roles and responsibilities for protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure gets a resounding “yes” from all quarters of government — Democrats, Republicans, independents, the president and Congress. But the agreement stops there. Despite the introduction of scores of bills in both houses, nothing significant has been passed. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has called for creating a temporary select committee to break the logjam. Federal Computer Week